From this
To this in eight minutes
Vancouver, despite its big city aspirations, is still very much a small town. One night recently I left my hotel, situated in an East Vancouver industrial area, and drove through the downtown east side, through the financial district, and through Coal Harbor to the vast expanse of Stanley Park in under 10 minutes. I was travelling crosstown and beneath the speed limit. I traversed each micro neighborhood (some only a matter of several blocks) in mere minutes.
I keep waiting for Vancouver to grow up. Transform into the city I think it should be—the city it has the potential to become. I’ve lived in big cities in several countries and I love their constant movement, the anonymity, the sense of history, the layering of culture, and the inevitable decay. Vancouver is so shiny and fresh and I still find that difficult. At 125 years it’s still in its infancy and I have to remind myself of that. It has a lot of maturing up to do and, admittedly, so do I. Maybe that’s why I came back here—Vancouver still has a blank page aspect to it, a plasticity in its forming character, that I find easy to relate to.
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